Language Acquisition and Bilingualism Consequences for a Multilingual
Language Acquisition and Bilingualism: Consequences for a Multilingual Society Toronto, May 4 7, 2006 * This research was partially supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 4806) Inflectional Verb Errors in the Acquisition of Russian by Bilingual and Monolingual Children Sharon Armon Lotem, Bar Ilan University, Natalia Gagarina, ZAS, Berlin, Olga Gupol, Bar Ilan University, Israel For more information, please write to: armonls@mail. biu. ac. il Research Objectives Method – monolinguals • q. Method – bilinguals To compare the erroneous use of verbal inflections in the early verb development of Russian, in Russian monolinguals and Russian Hebrew sequential bilinguals. • Three L 1 Russian speaking children • Eight L 1 Russian L 2 Hebrew bilingual children • Second recording of two of the L 1 Russian L 2 Hebrew bilingual children Research Questions V. 1; 5 – 4; 5. . . [analyzed utterances ~32000] Vi. 2; 0 – 2; 10. . . [analyzed utterances ~4500] L. 1; 2 – 3; 0 [analyzed utterances ~5000] • Excluded: frozen forms, immediate repetitions, (self repetitions), citations, yes -no sentences, exclamations. . . 1. What are the types of erroneous use of verb inflection? 2. Is there a relation of erroneous use to the general development of verb grammar in children measured in: MLU ratio of verb utterances over all utterances (VU%) the productivity of verb inflection Vanja (V. ), Vitja (Vi. ), Liza (L. ) • The mean length of recordings per month 2. 5 hours Child Age MLU • onset of the V prod. • onset/development of productivity target-like use • 2; 1 1. 332 2; 3 2. 153 2; 10 2. 758 VU (%) Verb lemmas 4, 6 32, 1 36, 0 16 99 120 V. language influence on the acquisition process of the first language? Vi. 2; 1 2; 34 2; 10 1. 764 1. 974 3. 400 10, 0 30, 7 47, 3 10 52 120 L. 1; 8 1; 11 2; 10 1. 017 1. 199 3. 054 11, 1 22, 5 41, 4 10 46 140 1. We expect to see the common monolingual errors in both groups as well as unique bilingual difficulties. 2. Bilingual verb development will show delay with respect to the norms of linguistic monolingual behaviour. 3. Second language influence on the acquisition process of the first language will manifest itself in contrastive structures. 4. Common monolingual errors will reduce over time, while unique bilingual difficulties will increase. Monolinguals • Gender in the past is the major source of errors • Person in the present errors occur only during the onset of productivity • Number errors are marginal Subjects & Data - Monolingual 3. Do bilingual errors change over time? 4. Are the errors in the bilingual production evidence for second Predictions nine months later • The mean length of recordings 45 min • Total analyzed utterances in both phases: 2, 947 • Excluded: frozen forms, immediate repetitions, (self repetitions), citations, yes-no sentences, exclamations. . . Agreement errors Aspectual errors Monolingual acquisition of Russian • Productive use of verb inflection three/four months after the onset of verb production (cf. , Kiebzak Mandera et al. 1997, Poupynin 1998, Gagarina 2003, etc. ) • Ratio of the verb utterances (VU) over all utterances becomes near target number of the VU (comparing children’s output and input) five to seven months after the emergence of verbs Russian Verbal System • MLU reflects these developmental changes • Three tenses and two aspects Perfective (Pf) Imperfective (Ipf) Past + + Present + Future + (analytical – to be +inf) • Number SG, PL • Gender Masc, Fem, Neut • Person 1 st, 2 nd, and 3 rd • About 50 inflectional microclasses (i. e. the smallest subset of an inflectional class above the paradigm, definable as the set of paradigms which share exactly the same morpholog i cal generalizations, but may differ via the application of phonological processes (Dressler and Gagarina 1999) • The 1 st productive microclass: two stems/bases: igra-t’ (OB inf) – igraj-u (CB 1 s) play Comparability of data Categories of analysis For the general comparison of linguistic development, we computed MLU: • one is comparable to onset of verb production • two are comparable to onset of productivity • five of the bilingual children can be compared to the monolingual children at age 2; 10 • In the second samples, the early bilingual is comparable to onset of productivity, and the late bilingual can still be compared to the monolingual children at age 2; 10 • The number and percentage of • verbal utterances of all utterances (VU%) • morphological errors (for these utterances) • The erroneous uses of the verbs 1. Use of the wrong form in the context: • Root infinitives • Contextually infelicitous tense • Luck of subject verb agreement in person, number and gender 2. Wrong use of aspect 3. Use of the wrong pattern for the stem shift In order to establish a comparable level of the morphological development we computed the VU%: • seven of the bilinguals are comparable to 2; 10 and older. This also holds for the later samples. • only one child, who is a simultaneous bilingual, is comparable with the onset of verb production Summary of Errors Findings General verb production Distribution of errors Four kinds of errors were found to be typical for both groups of children: 1. The production of infinitives instead of finite forms 2. Wrong person in present tense 3. Wrong gender in past tense 4. Stem errors These errors are more typical of younger monolinguals. They are evident in the bilingual group after the age of 3; 6. Error types 1 3 reduce over time. Two kinds of errors are unique to the bilingual group, and increase over time: 1. Wrong aspect (Imperfective for Perfective) 2. Wrong tense Hebrew verbal system • • • Five derivational conjugations ( binyanim) 4 root based types that consist of 24 subclasses 3 tenses: past, present, future Present tense: agreement in gender and number Conclusions Past & Future tenses: agreement in person, gender and number Contrastive analysis • • Typologically different stem vs. root system Different gender system: No neutral gender in Hebrew Different inflections in present/future tense Different inflections in past tense Different tense categorization Presence/absence of aspect Monolingual verb production • Onset of verb production: error rate of 16 27% • Onset of inflectional productivity: strong reduction of errors (under 9%) • By the age of 2; 10: further reduction of errors (ca. 2 3%) Bilingual verb production in Russian • Error rate of all children is higher (14% 45%), even when: • MLU matches monolinguals at 2; 10 • VU% is higher than monolinguals at 2; 10 • exposure to Hebrew less than a year • Error rate increases over time • Errors found in both populations may indicate a delay (for the early bilinguals) and attrition (for the late bilinguals) • Errors which are unique for bilinguals may suggest L 2 influence. • The disappearance of the monolingual errors over time supports an analysis in terms of L 2 influence. Poster Design by Makushner@gmail. com • No morphological manifestation of aspect
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